Flatpack Component

The Flatpack component supports fixed width and delimited file parsing via the FlatPack library.Notice: This component only supports consuming from flatpack files to Object model. You can not (yet) write from Object model to flatpack format.

Maven users will need to add the following dependency to their pom.xml for this component:

URI format

Or for a delimited file handler with no configuration file just use

You can append query options to the URI in the following format, ?option=value&option=value&...

URI Options

Name

Default Value

Description

delimiter

,

The default character delimiter for delimited files.

textQualifier

"

The text qualifier for delimited files.

ignoreFirstRecord

true

Whether the first line is ignored for delimited files (for the column headers).

splitRows

true

The component can either process each row one by one or the entire content at once.

allowShortLines

false

Camel 2.9.7 and 2.10.5 onwards: Allows for lines to be shorter than expected and ignores the extra characters.

ignoreExtraColumns

false

Camel 2.9.7 and 2.10.5 onwards: Allows for lines to be longer than expected and ignores the extra characters.

Examples

flatpack:fixed:foo.pzmap.xml creates a fixed-width endpoint using the foo.pzmap.xml file configuration.

flatpack:delim:bar.pzmap.xml creates a delimited endpoint using the bar.pzmap.xml file configuration.

flatpack:foo creates a delimited endpoint called foo with no file configuration.

Message Headers

Camel will store the following headers on the IN message:

Header

Description

camelFlatpackCounter

The current row index. For splitRows=false the counter is the total number of rows.

Message Body

The component delivers the data in the IN message as a org.apache.camel.component.flatpack.DataSetList object that has converters for java.util.Map or java.util.List.
Usually you want the Map if you process one row at a time (splitRows=true). Use List for the entire content (splitRows=false), where each element in the list is a Map.
Each Map contains the key for the column name and its corresponding value.

For example to get the firstname from the sample below:

However, you can also always get it as a List (even for splitRows=true). The same example:

Header and Trailer records

The header and trailer notions in Flatpack are supported. However, you must use fixed record IDs:

header for the header record (must be lowercase)

trailer for the trailer record (must be lowercase)

The example below illustrates this fact that we have a header and a trailer. You can omit one or both of them if not needed.

Using the endpoint

A common use case is sending a file to this endpoint for further processing in a separate route. For example:

You can also convert the payload of each message created to a Map for easy Bean Integration

Flatpack DataFormat

The Flatpack component ships with the Flatpack data format that can be used to format between fixed width or delimited text messages to a List of rows as Map.

marshal = from List<Map<String, Object>> to OutputStream (can be converted to String)

unmarshal = from java.io.InputStream (such as a File or String) to a java.util.List as an org.apache.camel.component.flatpack.DataSetList instance.
The result of the operation will contain all the data. If you need to process each row one by one you can split the exchange, using Splitter.

Notice: The Flatpack library does currently not support header and trailers for the marshal operation.

Options

The data format has the following options:

Option

Default

Description

definition

null

The flatpack pzmap configuration file. Can be omitted in simpler situations, but its preferred to use the pzmap.

fixed

false

Delimited or fixed.

ignoreFirstRecord

true

Whether the first line is ignored for delimited files (for the column headers).

textQualifier

"

If the text is qualified with a char such as ".

delimiter

,

The delimiter char (could be ;, or similar)

parserFactory

null

Uses the default Flatpack parser factory.

allowShortLines

false

Camel 2.9.7 and 2.10.5 onwards: Allows for lines to be shorter than expected and ignores the extra characters.

ignoreExtraColumns

false

Camel 2.9.7 and 2.10.5 onwards: Allows for lines to be longer than expected and ignores the extra characters.

Usage

To use the data format, simply instantiate an instance and invoke the marshal or unmarshal operation in the route builder:

The sample above will read files from the order/in folder and unmarshal the input using the Flatpack configuration file INVENTORY-Delimited.pzmap.xml that configures the structure of the files. The result is a DataSetList object we store on the SEDA queue.

In the code above we marshal the data from a Object representation as a List of rows as Maps. The rows as Map contains the column name as the key, and the the corresponding value. This structure can be created in Java code from e.g. a processor. We marshal the data according to the Flatpack format and convert the result as a String object and store it on a JMS queue.

Dependencies

To use Flatpack in your camel routes you need to add the a dependency on camel-flatpack which implements this data format.